Yesterday, Alabama joined Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida in declaring a state of emergency as officials and residents prepared for Karen, which is expected to approach the central Gulf Coast today as a weak hurricane or tropical storm.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Interior Department recalled workers furloughed because of the government shutdown to deal with the storm.

Karen would be the second named storm of the season to make landfall in the United States — the first since Tropical Storm Andrea hit Florida in June. In addition to strong winds, the storm is forecast to produce rainfall of 3 to 6 inches through Sunday night. Isolated rain totals of up to 10 inches are possible.

Late yesterday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported that Karen was losing strength, with maximum sustained winds that had dropped to 45 mph. Karen was about 205 miles south-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River and was on the move again, heading north-northwest at 7 mph.

Conditions were not ripe for the storm to strengthen. A hurricane watch was dropped yesterday afternoon. A tropical-storm watch stretched from Destin, Fla., to the mouth of the Pearl River, which is a boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi. A tropical-storm warning was in effect from the mouth of the Pearl to Morgan City, La.

A westward tick in the earlier forecast tracks prompted officials in Plaquemines Parish, an area inundated last year by slow-moving Hurricane Isaac, to order mandatory evacuations, mostly on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River.

Forecasters were not expecting Karen to stall, as Isaac did last year.

Evacuations also were ordered on Grand Isle, a barrier-island community where the only route out is a flood-prone highway, and in coastal Lafourche Parish. Traffic at the mouth of the Mississippi River was stopped yesterday as a precaution.

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